There are a number of known sleep disorders that have a significant impact on sufferers.
Bedwetting (enuresis), particularly nocturnal enuresis, is a common childhood sleep disorder. For example, in Australia it is believed to affect up to 750,000 children, with around 18% of school-aged children wetting at least once per week and around 2.4% wetting nightly. Bedwetting has a significant psychosocial impact on children who are often treated as social outcasts. Children miss out on important activities such as overnight school excursions and sleep-overs and in effect live in fear of exposure of their disorder. A study has suggested that bedwetting may have far-reaching consequences including effects on self-perception, interpersonal relationships, sexual activity and quality of life. Children with bedwetting also commonly have lower self esteem, however, it has been shown this will improve with successful treatment. Unfortunately, bedwetting is often trivialised, and in Australia, for example, only around 34% of families seek professional help, with many people not knowing where to go for help or being told that the child will eventually “grow out of it”.
Treatment for bedwetting is available, with an enuresis alarm generally considered the most effective treatment. Studies suggest, however, that despite the availability of this treatment, many children (between around 25 to 35%) fail alarm training.
Clinical observations on children undergoing alarm training suggest that those who fail to wake on operation of the enuresis alarm are more likely to fail alarm therapy.
One type of enuresis alarm is the bell-and-pad bed alarm. Wired body worn alarm and wireless body worn alarms are also known. The bell-and-pad bed alarm relies on use of a relatively large urine mat sensor that is placed on the child's bed at night, with the child sleeping on top. In the case of body worn alarms, the sensor can be placed in the child's underpants. When the child wets during the night, the urine triggers the sensor, resulting in a relatively loud noise emitting from the alarm device. The noise wakes the child conditioning him/her to recognise the sensation of a full bladder and to hopefully inhibit urination or waken. The disadvantages of the bell-and-pad alarm include the loudness of the alarm (which usually wakes the entire household), the children complaining of not being able to wear underpants or pants to bed (as it delays the time for the urine to reach the sensor), increased washing (as the bed linen is still usually wet) and/or dislodgement of the sensor which results in treatment failure.
While wired and wireless body worn devices address some of these disadvantages, successful treatment of enuresis is still considered too low. For example, it has been observed by one of the current inventors that around 82% of children who presented to an incontinence clinic as having failed alarm training did not wake to the alarm sounding.
An example of another sleep disorder is bruxism. The teeth grinding associated with this sleep disorder can be a quite debilitating problem and can result in jaw pain, headache and teeth damage.
Any discussion of documents, acts, materials, devices, articles or the like which has been included in the present specification is solely for the purpose of providing a context for the present invention. It is not to be taken as an admission that any or all of these matters form part of the prior art base or were common general knowledge in the field relevant to the present invention as it existed before the priority date of each claim of this application.